Reunited After 500 Years - St. Constantine And His Finger

 

Reunited after 500 years - Constantine and his finger: Giant bronze statue of Roman emperor in Italy is finally given back its middle digit after it was mistaken by the Louvre for a TOE

A giant bronze statue of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great has been reunited with a finger that it lost some 500 years ago. Held in the Capitoline Museums of Rome, remains of the 39ft colossus include a head as tall as a man, a damaged left hand and the sphere it once bore. In 2018, doctoral student Aurélia Azéma realised that a 15-inch-long bronze digit in Paris' Louvre was not a toe — as it had been identified in 1913 — but Constantine's lost forefinger. 

After a resin reconstruction of the the digit was proven to fit on the colossus' hand in June that year, this Wednesday saw the real thing mounted back in its proper place.'A non-invasive, reversible and invisible system' was used to 'perfectly' restore the bronze finger onto the statue's hand, Capitoline Museums director Claudio Parisi Presicce told the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero. 'It’s a good way to mark the reopening of museums,' added the mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi. Museums in the capital city were allowed to reopen on April 26 following an easing of restrictions designed to slow the spread of COVID-19. The head, hand and globe fragments were acquired by the collection of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on Capitoline Hill in Rome in 1471 as a gift from Pope Sixtus IV. Source